Will you use your imagination for a moment?

Yes?

Okay!

Fredrick Kearney Jr @fredasem

So let's all imagine that we lived in a world where strange bearded men named Santa Claus did break into our homes to give us presents in exchange for copious amounts of cookies and milk.

Lets imagine that this year Santa brought you a gift... which to your immediate horror, doesn’t look like a gift at all...

As you stand right there in your living room, you are standing face to face with bomb…

A bomb, attached to a giant gift box, which is set to detonate in one minute.

At this point, how would you feel?

Shocked? Afraid? Desperate? Confused?

As the timer ticked down, what would you do?

Would you try to disable it? Or would you let it detonate and run out of the house?

As time passes you desperately think through your options, none of which provide a clear action to take.

5… 4… 3...

Your breathing intensifies as you move into desperation mode.

2… 1...

Your body tenses up as you prepare for the inevitable.

0…

Boom!

You hear a loud explosion as the gift box catapults into the air....

...and releases a flock of $100 bills that gather on your living room floor.

You look around and notice the room, filled with thousands of dollars.

The bomb, which was at first perceived as great danger, was now a source of great wealth and abundance.

It was a gift... in strange wrapping paper.

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Gifts In Strange Wrapping Paper

Now I share this story as an analogy for life, especially when life leaves those ticking gift bombs at our front door.

Oftentimes these gifts in strange wrapping paper are presented to us as experiences that are outside of our comfort zone.

Experiences that cause us to freeze up, to feel insecure, lost, or confused.

Eric Ward @ericjamesward

More often than not, these experiences seem undesirable, something we wish to run away from.

But then something happens that we weren’t expecting.

And what was once a terrible situation, ends up changing our lives for the better.

I call these experiences: gifts in strange wrapping paper.

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My Weirdly Wrapped Gifts

To explore this concept more, I want to share a story of my own gift in strange wrapping paper.

Lately, Santa’s been dropping gift bombs at my door like it’s Christmas already.

I'm currently in a polyamorous relationship with my partner Dani, which means that we are in a committed relationship but we are also open to dating other people simultaneously.

Over the past few weeks our polyamorous adventures have become more intense in that Dani is now starting to more fully engage in another relationship.

This experience has brought forth a lot of uncomfortable feelings for me and it's been difficult to process them at times.

Within the past few days, I’ve noticed a few gift bombs show up at my front door.

One after the other, I had no choice but to confront them.

Last night, this gift bomb came in one swift moment:

I was at a party with Dani and her partner.

Her partner was being very flirtatious and physical with her, and I was beginning to feel uncomfortable.

I noticed my body begin to tense up as though I was preparing to receive a punch in the gut.

When my partner came up to me to hug me I immediately resisted her. I was overwhelmed and her offer of physical reassurance was not helping.

I let her know how I was feeling and we decided to step out of the party to have a brief conversation, which helped, but I still struggled for the majority of the night to accept what was happening in front of me.

I felt like I was losing her.

And at that moment, I felt the burdening weight of that gift bomb in my hands.

And it felt like it was about to explode.

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Accepting The Gift

Now the situation that I'm referencing is probably more extreme than most people have to deal with on a daily basis, especially in an intimate relationship.

However, the thing that we can all relate with is the fact that there are times when life presents itself in ways that causes us to feel uncomfortable, lost, confused, or straight up out of control.

It is during these times when we have a choice: we can either accept what is happening and deal with it or we can choose to not accept it and let our emotions get the best of us.

Justin Luebke @jluebke

The latter usually comes in the form of blame, where our ego gets activated and it does everything it can to preserve itself by convincing us that we are a victim and that it is someone else's fault for how we feel.

Sometimes we’ll run away from the uncomfortable feelings by drinking a lot of alcohol, smoking weed, or literally running away to avoid the discomforting situation.

As in our gift bomb analogy, this would be us running out of the house to avoid (what we perceive) as an absolute disaster.

But what would happen if we, instead of running away, we chose courage and sought to discover what dwelled inside?

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Courageously Opening Our Strangely Wrapped Gifts

Through life experience, I’ve learned that oftentimes these pending “disasters” are often not that at all.

Whether it's pain, fear, challenges, or stressors that I'm experiencing, whatever is occurring, I try to see it as a gift in strange wrapping paper.

I like to use this analogy, especially when life is a blur and everything seems to be off.

Life is constantly presenting us with opportunities to grow in new ways and many times when opportunities come in the form of strange occurrences or situations they force us to operate in a new way.

More often than not, the things that we perceive as scary or “bad”, are often the things that change us for the better.

Pete Wright
@petewright

That's why I say they are gifts in strange wrapping paper.

It doesn't always seem apparent that something can be good, especially if it's wrapped in a package that doesn't look desirable.

We all know the phrase “don't judge a book by its cover”, and in this instance that phrase is dead accurate.

How often do we judge potential experiences before we experience them fully?

How often do we say, "I don't like that" before we even try it?

How often do we avoid trying things because we are afraid of what will happen… or what people will think of us?

I think that the answer to these questions is simply: A LOT

I think we avoid trying new things A LOT of the time.

Why?

Because it's easy.

It's easy to do what feels comfortable.

It's easy to stay the same rather than to change.

It's easy to avoid what we are afraid of (or at least for awhile it is).

Change is often experienced as pain or discomfort when we first encounter it and no one would choose to have that.

However, when we remain the same and never change, over time what happens is we start to experience a sense of stagnancy.

That stagnancy begins to show up in our lives as stressors, anxieties, challenges, or even physical maladies.

And so the situations that we avoid, often show up in our lives in one way or another.

This, I believe, is our evolutionary dilemma.

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What I've Discovered

In my experience in polyamory I’ve been tested to sit in a myriad of uncomfortable situations.

In this particular one, the situation was uncomfortable to me because I felt like I could lose my partner, or that our relationship could change in ways that I don’t like.

As much as this is true, if I were to say “no” to the experience, I would never truly know if it is 1) something I can handle and 2) something that could actually be good for me in the future.

This weekend I've been meditating on the situation at hand, and as I work through what I am experiencing I’m noticing that something special is happening.

As I am beginning to accept what is happening in front of me...

I am noticing that I am feeling more free.

I’m feeling more free to be who I am and to explore more things that I would like.

I’m realizing the amazing amount of opportunities that are opening up AS A RESULT of this seemingly terrible situation.

The gift was freedom, wrapped up in a perception of “losing my relationship”.

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Embrace Your Gifts

I always seek to face my fears head on and embrace the situations that feel uncomfortable to me in the best way that I can.

Does that always look pretty?

No way.

It usually looks like a complete mess, and I'm usually completely overwhelmed when I'm in the thick of it.

As I’ve learned to embrace what I'm feeling and accept the situation that is in front of me, I’ve noticed that there is a lot of power in that.

I may not always feel like I'm growing in the moment but when I have time to process the situation and share how I'm feeling, I begin to change and transform in ways that I never thought possible.

Gerome Viavant @geromeviavant

This weekend I felt completely vulnerable, and totally unsure of who I was and where I was going…

It was through accepting the situation and being okay with feeling uncomfortable where I was able to understand more about what I wanted and what I needed.

As those uncomfortable feelings (that strange wrapping paper), started to break down, I started to notice that there was something very shiny that was hidden within.

For me, that gift in strange wrapping paper was freedom.

Can I say I fully understand what this freedom looks, feels, and sounds like, or how I will use it?

Not yet...

But I can already feel that it is something that will help me to thrive.

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In Conclusion...

Life is always going to present us with situations that are difficult to deal with and there's a very good reason for this.

In my opinion, the reason for this is so that we can proactively explore ourselves in creative new ways.

It is my belief that we as human beings are incredibly unique and dynamic in nature.

Although we may act the same in some ways, we are also very unique in our own ways.

Sometimes we just need a little push from life in order to access those more unique parts of ourselves.

And that - comes in the form of very strangely wrapped gifts.

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Do you have any strange gifts in your life right now?

What are they and what gifts have you discovered inside?

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